I have just been lucky enough to acquire a Musigny Grand Cru from Mugnier at a very fair price. Mugnier just released his 2017 Musigny along with its 2022 bottlings.
He claims he hates seeing his wines being drank as infants, and as this is something he can control he just pushes back the release. This is of course an amazing reason, and in my view it also releases the distributor from the financial pressure and of course the restaurant, as for the vast majority keeping wines for +5yrs is just not profitable at all if they want to offer a fair price.
In my opinion this is something absolutely necessary - of course, for Estates that can afford it - given where the market is today. Does it make sense to buy Chevalier-Montrachet 2022 from Domaine Leflaive at +1k? I don’t think there are many clients willing to pay 2k for a newly released Chevy, and I don’t think it is in the best interest of the Estate either.
Again, I want to emphasize that I think the top Estate should start doing this with their top crus, of course a negociant cannot hold back vintages in the beggining.
Bad idea since this results in the wines being released right at the start of their dumb phase. Drink them within the first few years, then let them sleep for a while.
Leflaive or Rousseau GC’s from 2017 - as it was the year I put as an example - are drinking beautifully today. No need to say much much better than 2022’s.
Leflaive 17s like the Chevy have been drinking well for 5 years. No need to wait to release.
As far as Mugnier Musigny, I’m glad he delayed release because I was able to get 14/15/16 for a good price the last few years. It felt like I was time traveling knowing so much about how each of the vintages had turned out and how hard to pursue each wine.
That said if I had been buying wine back then, the prices would have been cheaper for each on original release dates and there would have been more bottles available, so it really only worked out well for someone like me who happened to enter the game at the right time.
Take Leflaive as an example, I paid $900 for the 17 Chevy on release and was offered as many cases as I wanted. If they released it today, it would fetch closer to $3k and allocations would be meager. So delaying release would have been no good for me.
But your opinion is based on how the pricing has skyrocketed during these past years. We have to look at this going forward, no looking backwards.
If your opinion is that prices are going to keep on growing, then of course - though I prefer paying a 10-20% extra for a bottle that is ready than having to wait for 5+ years. But if your opinion, like mine, is that the only was to sustain the prices increases we’ve seen for most Domaines is just releasing the wine with more time under the cork - see Arnoux-Lachaux or Arnaud Ente for example - then the playground is different.
All thi excl. the basic argument that the Domaines should likely try to get people to drink their top wines in the proper drinking window - as much as possible of course.
I prefer to drink wine through its entire maturity curve, so like experiencing grand crus young, mid term and while mature.
I also somewhat disagree regarding 17 Rousseau; while the Chambertin is drinking pretty well, a lot of the other grand crus aren’t. Ruchottes has been pretty tight, notably.